The Red Hen…and More Cooking Stories
Rated: NR
Genre: Family, Animate
Street Date: February 12, 2013
Available On: DVD
The Film: Ed Emberley and Rebecca Emberley’s “The Red Hen,” “Bread Comes to Life” narrated by Lily Tomlin, Jane Yolen’s “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?” and “Arnie the Doughnut” narrated by Michael McKean.
The Extras: Easy-to-follow recipe for how to bake your own splendid cake, read-along captioning
Recommendation: Typically I love the Scholastic releases; this one didn’t capture my attention or imagination as much as I’ve become accustomed to. I didn’t find “The Red Hen,” a variation on the Russian folktale “The Little Red Hen,” to be all that inventive and the live-action short “Bread Comes to Life” felt a bit long and a touch convoluted. Thankfully the program does improve with its final two stories. “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?” is an enjoyable romp through bad table manners (I was a rather temperamental dinner guest as a child) and “Arnie the Doughnut” is a somewhat surreal tale about a doughnut that would rather not be eaten. If your children are interested in cooking, something that never really caught my attention, this collection might be appealing; for me it was a lesser entry in a phenomenal collection.

-Ryan Michael Painter
(Copyright 2013 Sinclair Broadcast Group)